Matt Sakakeeny

Biography

Matt Sakakeeny is associate professor of music at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the author of Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans and edited two collections: Keywords in Sound and Remaking New Orleans. Sakakeeny serves on the board of Roots of Music and the Dinerral Shavers Educational Fund. He received a grant from the Spencer Foundation for his next book on marching band education in the New Orleans school system.

Schedule

Approached as a wellspring of cultural authenticity and historical exceptionality, New Orleans appears in opposition to a nation perpetually driven by progress. Remaking New Orleans shows how this narrative is rooted in a romantic cultural tradition, continuously repackaged through the twin engines of tourism and economic development, and supported by research that has isolated the city from comparison and left unquestioned its entrenched inequality. Working against this feedback loop, the contributors place New Orleans at the forefront of national patterns of urban planning, place-branding, structural inequality, and racialization. Nontraditional sites like professional wrestling matches, middle-class black suburbs, and Vietnamese gardens take precedence over clichéd renderings of Creole cuisine, voodoo queens, and hot jazz. Covering the city's founding through its present and highlighting changing political and social formations, this volume remakes New Orleans as a rich site for understanding the quintessential concerns of American cities.

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